Need a Late Night Musical Boost?

It’s two thirty in the morning. Staring furiously at my calculator, I glance at my roommate. He is sound asleep like a normal human being. The deadline is in thirty minutes. My eyebrows arch in agony. This has happened to me way too many times this semester. How did I work so slowly?

Music has been known to have a powerful impact on mood. Nobody won a Nobel prize for discovering that sad music makes you sad, and that happy music makes you happy. But more than mood, I have found that music dramatically affects my productivity, and it took me two months of late night calculus sessions to discover that I was sabotaging myself.

Like most people, I have a study playlist for when I have a metric boatload of work to do. This playlist is about as upbeat as an animal rescue commercial. The lack of choruses and catchy beats would focus my attention I believed, but, in fact, it does quite the opposite.

The lethargic mood of the music makes me lethargic. I begin to fade out. My mind wanders into each and every crevice imaginable. I am listening to the playlist right now, and I have watched more Youtube videos than a sane person should while I hoped to be writing.

Aside from lighting my homework on fire, this is the worst possible thing that could happen in the wee hours of the morning. I am not only slacking off on my work, but also on my sleep.

I decided to make a new playlist. No more slow Album Leaf and sad Radiohead for me. I chose the most smile-inducing and feet-moving songs and artists I could possibly think of.